Finland's Ubisecure acquired by GMO Globalsign for IoT Identity

In tech acquisition news, Finland-based Identity and Access Management (IAM) specialist Ubisecure announces today it has been acquired by GMO Globalsign, one of the world’s largest publicly-trusted certificate authorities. The acquisition price was not disclosed.
While Ubisecure isn’t exactly what you would call a startup – their products were first under development in 1999, they’ve been successful in positioning themselves in one of the more exciting fields for technology these days. With Ubisecure’s technology under their belt, GMO Globalsign is targeting the massively growing Internet of Things market where every “thing” will soon need a trusted identity.

“The Ubisecure product is highly attractive for service providers and governments due to its specific features for use cases that require a strong focus on the integration of customers or citizens at large scale,” said Martin Kuppinger, founder of KuppingerCole, a European information security analyst firm. “Providing massive scalability is a must to extend IAM to the IoT, where every ‘thing’ has its own identity.”

This is one of the largest issues surrounding the Internet of Things. If our brave new world is that your toaster should be able to talk to your TV and Phone, then there needs to be standard protocols for both trusted identity and communication – so that your Philips toaster can talk to your Samsung phone and Sony TV. As it stands currently, OEMs and startups are left on their own to build their own silos of communication, which somewhat defeats the purpose.

“GlobalSign’s vast worldwide organization and channels will allow us to bring our IAM solutions to a global market,” stated Charles Sederholm, chief executive officer of Ubisecure. “We share a common vision for identity services, both for today’s enterprises that need elegant IAM solutions, and for the billions of connected ‘things’ that will require identities and interactions in ways we have yet to imagine.”